Sara Dobie Bauer

Meh. I’m disappointed. But I guess I deserved that. I don’t know what I’d expected out of a short about a murderous stalker Santa…

This was boring, weird and cheesy — in that exact order. Kris, our “Father Christmas,” was a spectacularly dull narrator. The first pages barely managed to keep my attention. Unfortunately, his POV is the only one here.

Things got weird when Kris became somewhat fixated on Jack — I say ‘somewhat,’ because he was pretty boring for a stalker, he just watched his stalkee with no real emotions behind it — and right off the bat, started breaking limbs and killing the baddies in Jack’s vicinity, no questions asked. He was like Terminator, only more efficient because he could teleport using some sort of magical subspace.

The weird continued when Jack decided it would be a good idea to have sex with the big and slightly violent stranger that kept randomly appearing in his apartment. There was almost zero chemistry, the sexy bits were not, and I simply wanted to skip them.

Oh, I almost forgot! There was one moderately interesting part, right before the cheesy one, when the stalker vibes briefly intensified as our Santa decided he’d like to keep Jack forever and ever in the aforementioned magical subspace, Gollum-style. Surprisingly, Jack reacted like a normal person: he did not take that shit well. Sadly, this part was very short.

The cheesy part was probably supposed to be sweet and fluffy, I think? And maybe it was, but by that time I was already so fed up with this seemingly short story that it was just too much. Suffice to say that there’s a candy-cane-sweet HEA, so if that’s your thing… go right ahead.… (more)

This was a fun, quick read set in a world where humans know about vampires, werewolves, witches, etc. because of the vampires "coming out" to humanity and setting up their own laws and culture in order to live in harmony with humans.
One of the rules is vampires aren't legally allowed to stalk humans for prey or change humans to vampires and also aren't supposed to involve themselves romantically with humans (because it usually leads to them wanting to turn their lovers).
Ethan, a French 200-something year old vampire that's lead his life as a loner and a mercenary for hire, literally stumbles into Tristan, a NYU music student, and can't seem to forget him no matter how hard he tries (or how many bad guys he kills). Luckily for him, Tristan has somewhat of a vampire fetish - but has been spurred by an abusive ex-lover so is still very wary when Ethan starts to pay attention to him (see: stalk).
I found both of the main characters very likeable though this book is all from Ethan's POV. Four stars because there were a lot of cringe or eye-rolling but nothing atypical of romance, but those moments are sprinkled among a lot of laugh-out-loud and/or very sexy ones that kept me from wanting to put the book down.… (more)

I started to like this book the farther I got into it but initially it was a lot of eye rolling. The constant mentions of IPA and brand name beers plus just both the characters being initially deeply annoying - but I pushed through and ended up being charmed by their relationship build-up. However, as a whole, I don't find this realistic at all. They're just not two people that would last very long and the author relied on tropes to the point where it's just really not a realistic story. I usually don't have a problem with that (I mean, it's fiction) but when it's set in a very real world situation including actual brand names and locations it becomes a problem for me to get past. The author should have made up a beer brand and maybe didn't rely so much on a Cincinnati location when it could have been in Anywhere, USA.… (more)